Spellbound Precure
by beforeyoufall
Summary: Everyone has something they'd like to change about themselves. Lexa's own resolution to become more honest is cut short by the discovery of her father's nefarious plans against both Earth and the Cloud Kingdom that lies beyond. By battling harpies and breaking spells, she and her friends must save both worlds as the Spellbound Precure in this fanseries loosely based on Swan Lake.
1. Episode 1

Rothbart wasn't running for his life so much as _stumbling _for it.

It would've been impossible to run and run _away_ so effortlessly after what he'd just gone through, what he'd seen. Everything he'd done and everything he'd failed to do.

The attack on the Cloud Kingdom's queen—his sister—had been months in the planning. But in the end, no one was as shocked as him, the perpetrator, at the outcome.

So the queen was gone now, along with her husband, who'd been another necessary casualty to Rothbart's so-called revolution. Their daughter had become an orphan, spared of her life but little else. Rothbart could still hear her anguished cries as her parents' bodies fell limp into her wounded arms. Much like in his case, the incident would leave her changed for life, in more ways than one.

But he could only spend so much time lingering on today's tragedies. He wouldn't have a tomorrow himself if the royal guards, the Pretty Cure, caught up to him. They were more familiar with the palace's grounds than he was and already on his tail, completely unaware of the traitor amidst their ranks.

"Rothbart!" that very traitor snarled, playing the part of the betrayed extraordinarily well as they lead the charge. "For the deaths of our beloved queen and king, we will take no mercy on you."

"I wouldn't expect you to," Rothbart mumbled as he picked up his pace.

"Quick! He's getting away!"

Spells flew at him from behind, a hassle to dodge but nothing compared to the dead end he soon found himself facing. In his efforts to escape, he'd wandered into the palace garden, where there was no other exit asides from the gate he'd come through. It was a classic storybook moment, when the hero was cornered into a fight he had no choice but to win.

But Rothbart was no hero; if his actions and inaction a few minutes ago were anything to go by, he was a villain, through and through. And he would not be winning today, not against the furious mob behind him.

His eyes wandered to the garden's pond and his decision was quick; he'd leapt in long before he'd even thought it through. If it was the last choice he ever made, he wanted to die of his own accord; that much he knew.

Cold water numbed his senses and as he sunk, he wondered where this pond would take him. The afterlife?

Wherever it was, Rothbart would be back someday.

And when he did return, he would have scores to settle and a revolution to restart.

* * *

><p><strong>Episode 1: True transformation! Confessions of an Evil Villain's Daughter<strong>

* * *

><p><em>Fifteen years later...<em>

Even before the discovery of Dad's evil lair, Lexa was having a rotten day.

It had all started at school, which was, admittedly, the source of most fourteen-year-olds' problems.

After a year of lying in the wait, her problem came to surface with Sarah Reyes' sudden return to town. Word of her arrival spread like wildfire at Sorrel Junior High, reaching Lexa just minutes too late.

"Did you see Gage with her, though?" a girl by Lexa's locker was saying. "He practically cornered her outside the school gates."

Her companion made a face at that, one Lexa was probably mirroring. "What does _Gage_ have to do with Sarah Reyes?"

The girl shrugged. "I heard they were friends before she moved away." The girl might've said more, but Lexa had sped off long before she could hear it.

If the gossips' information could be trusted, it was time for what Lexa had been _sure_ would not apply to this particular white lie: the inevitable revelation of the truth.

* * *

><p>"Gage, for the last time, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."<p>

Lexa skidded to a stop at Sarah's voice. Her stomach churned, only partially due to her mad dash to find the duo. Luckily, Gage's infamous maroon fedora had stood out like a red flag among the crowd buzzing around the schoolyard. As she watched on, Lexa had to wonder if his choice in headwear doubled as a red flag for other matters, too.

"Before you left!" Gage was practically screeching, his voice breaking out into octaves only dogs could hear. Heads turned, adding to the count of kids who'd already been gathered around Sarah. "You know, when I said liked you last year? And you said no, we should stay friends? I was heartbroken, but I understand now, Sarah. You said it because you were leaving Sorrel and didn't want to keep up a long distance relationship. You were actually very much enamored. Especially after I helped you during the science fair. Is that why you're back now? For me?"

He reached out to touch the popular girl's shoulder, but she drew back.

"We came back because we heard Uncle Mike went missing," Sarah said coolly, pretty and put together even in a situation like this. "My family wanted to support my aunt, so I'm just staying for the semester. The decision didn't have to do with anything else."

She went on, "I said it before and I'll say it again: I don't return your feelings. If you can't accept that, then stay away from me. My friendship isn't some consolation prize for helping me with the science fair or whatever."

At that, the many spectating students burst into applause. Lexa liked to think that it had more to do with Sarah's words than any previous, perhaps well-deserved bias against Gage. Whatever its cause, the clapping was Lexa's signal for a war over with and won. She would've joined in if it didn't risk drawing attention to herself.

Relieved, she was about to follow her peers back inside for class when from behind her, Gage shouted, "But that's not what _she_ said!"

_Run_, screamed a voice at the back of Lexa's mind, perhaps the true source of all her problems. Instead of obeying, her feet remained cemented to the ground, though they didn't dare turn around to face Gage and Sarah, like many of the students' had.

"That's not what who said?" Lexa could imagine Sarah blinking confusedly, maybe tucking back a stray strand of dark hair. "Who else gets a say in this but me?"

"Lexa Roth."

Every pair of eyes on the schoolyard turned to Lexa and every person behind them seemed turn against her. Facing Gage, who was pointing a finger at her accusingly, suddenly seemed much easier. Some of the spectators had whipped out phones to record Gage and Sarah's awkward confrontation, and now all the lenses were trained on Lexa, waiting for a reaction.

"Lexa?" Okay, _now_ Sarah was blinking confusedly. "_She_ told you that I liked you?"

"Yeah," Gage said, "after you left. You know her since your, um, uncle worked with her mom at the police station, right? She said that you hadn't wanted to reject me, but since you knew you were going to leave soon, you had no choice. That's why you deleted me off of your social media, too—because your love for me was, IS, too unbearable. Um, that last part was, word-for-word, what she said."

_God,_ Lexa thought, _this is like watching a traffic accident in slow motion._ Only she was the one behind the wheel, having long lost control of the vehicle.

Sarah shook her head. "That can't be true. Lexa was the one who encouraged me to reject you in the first place. And thank god for that, too-I was feeling guilty about it, but our talk convinced me that honesty is the best policy. Right, Lexa?"

_Say 'right', push the blame on Gage. You lied to keep him happy in the first place, anyway, and now he's _betrayed_ you. He was your friend. He's probably the only one in the whole student body less believable than you are, and that's saying something._

The voice's instructions were as tempting as ever, but it was also this kind of thinking that brought Lexa these kinds of problems in the first place. Every good liar knew when a gig was up—and it always 'when', never 'if'.

"I'm sorry, Sarah. Gage." Her words trembled along with the rest of her. And her next ones echoed the many whispers around her: "I can't believe something like this happened _again_."

* * *

><p>"How was your day?"<p>

"It was good."

Lexa might've been a compulsive liar, but she couldn't have been the only one who never answered this question truthfully.

"That's good." Her mother smiled, and Lexa found it very concerning that a police officer wasn't able to see through such an obvious lie. Maybe it was this thickness that was responsible for the bout of disappearances lately in Sorrel. Speaking of which...

Lexa leaned forward in the passenger seat of the police car. "Ooh, Sarah came back today. She was at school and she said something about her uncle going missing. Is it true?"

Mom clutched the steering wheel tighter. "It is. Officer Reyes went missing last week, but he was only declared as such yesterday. Last time we saw him, he was following a lead on the Lana Goodman Case."

It sounded terrible, but through the years Lexa had almost become desensitized to the potential hazards of Mom's job. However, Officer Reyes' disappearance hit close to home, presented possibilities that made her gut wrench. Carolyn Hall was good at her job, but that was what concerned Lexa the most; the woman wouldn't stop until either the culprit was taken in, or they took her.

As Mom's brown eyes narrowed on the road, Lexa's heart went out for the bags beneath them. "Does this mean you're in danger, too?"

"Not any more than you are, I don't think~" But there was uncertainty behind Mom's cheerful façade. "If anything, it just means we have to work harder on tracking this guy down. With Reyes gone, not only are we short a person, we now also have very personal reasons to try our bests and crack the case ASAP. I was about to talk to you about that, actually. The whole station's working over the weekend, so I'm afraid you'll have to spend it at your father's."

This would've normally been fine considering the circumstances, but…"Didn't I have a dance competition this weekend?" One Lexa had been really looking forward to. Her teacher—Gage's mother, actually—had allowed her input in their team's choreography and the thought of performing it had been the only thing that'd gotten her through this day.

"Gage's parents are driving you. You're good friends with him, right? You can just stay with them for the weekend."

It was everything Lexa could do not to interrupt her mother with a hiss of frustration. On paper, it made sense. Gage's family owned Sorrel Dance Studio, and they _were _friends before based solely on two basis's: 1) they'd been dancing together since preschool and 2) they both had such glaringly obvious faults that they could only tolerate each other's.

But after this…She wasn't sure if Nick ever wanted to see her again. She wasn't sure if she ever wanted to see _him _again. The things he'd said to Sarah made her want to shudder in her warm-ups.

Still, when her mother asked, "you're fine with these arrangements, right?" she responded with a shaky "right."

* * *

><p>If the sleepy town of Sorrel had anything at all of note, it would've been Swan Lake.<p>

It wasn't particularly large, but what it lacked in size it made up for in beauty. Lush spring grass framed brilliant strokes of blue, which made a gorgeous backdrop for the paper birds that littered the lake's calm surface. The titular swans where there was none in actuality.

Lexa wasn't sure how the paper swan tradition begun, but she was sure some tourist-trapping lunatic like her father had been the perpetrator. A Swan Lake without any live swans would've been false advertisement on the Sorrel tourist industry's part. But a Swan Lake where gullible visitors _folded their own_ _birds_, and wrote down the one trait they wished they possessed before letting the paper go, to glide on the waters said to reflect your ideal self—well, that was ay-okay, and seemed to bring in enough tourists to keep her father's cottage rentals afloat. Idiots from all over the world liked to travel to Nowhere, Canada just to make their respective wishes for personal growth, as ridiculous as it was to zero in on only one area for self-improvement. Lexa thought the only word they should've been writing down was "astuteness", but hey, it was those very idiots that paid for her meals and ballet lessons.

"Over here!" Dad was waving his cane frantically by the lake to get her attention. After giving Mom one final hug and a "stay safe" as goodbye, Lexa rushed over to greet him.

Bart Roth was, as per usual, not very cleanly shaven. His greying goatee along with his drooping glasses, three-piece-suits, and ever-present, carved-owl-tipped walking cane always gave Lexa the impression of an old, villainous professor, a far cry from Mom's eternally energetic air and crisp uniform. Thinking back to his frequent mood swings, it'd never been a mystery why her parents had split up. However, Lexa always wondered how the two had been drawn together in the first place.

"How's my little princess doing today?" With his free hand, he gave her a pat on the head. While she'd inherited his chiseled features, blue eyes, and dark hair, Lexa was nowhere close to his towering height.

"Good," she replied feebly. She stayed quiet as he led her into his house, which was right at the end of his line of cottages and much bigger. She stared at the folded swans on the water. _Writing down the one trait you wished you had, huh?_

Lexa thought back to the morning's aftermath, the whispers throughout all of her classes taunting, _"Liar Lexa's at it again."_ This incident had been way too close to the Paddington Noodles Lie, which had just started to die down.

It was all very unfair. She'd been truthful when she encouraged Sarah to turn Gage down, but then she'd felt responsible when she saw him sobbing beneath a staircase at school. Fibbing about the reasoning behind Sarah's rejection had seemed harmless at the time—but then, it always did. She always had good intentions—but the means and ends never justified them.

She slammed the door much harder than necessary as she went inside. Gage, fedora and all, had been one of her only friends at school, after every other one had claimed she was too untrustworthy to be around. _It's not just the big, outright lies,_ they'd say. _Whenever we talk to you, it feels like you're just saying crap you don't mean to get on our good sides. It's deceptive._

"SO WHAT IF I DON'T MEAN WHAT I SAY?!" she found herself yelling. "YES, RILEY, THAT DRESS WAS HIDEOUS THAT DAY, BUT SO WAS THAT GLOOMY EXPRESSION ON YOUR FACE. I WANTED TO CHEER YOU UP DARNIT, WHY'D YOU TURN ON _ME_?!"

"Um, Alexandra?"

Dad's saying her full name pulled her out from her train wreck of thoughts. She was in his dingy kitchen by then, with her fists clenched at the ceiling and tears rolling down flushed cheeks.

"Sorry…" She wiped her face and sat down at the table.

"Don't say sorry," Dad said sternly, in a tone that made Lexa want to apologize for apologizing.

He softened when he saw her flinch. "I don't know what's wrong, but you should only say that when you truly feel you did something wrong."

Lexa looked down to her lap, thinking that she hadn't 'truly' felt much—other than numbing regret over past actions—in a while. Suddenly, she lunged across the table, where some napkins had been stacked haphazardly. She grabbed a pen and started scribbling furiously on one of the napkins, pouring all of her unshed tears and unspoken fury into a single word:

"True?"

Dad was peering over her shoulder, squinting a little behind his rimless lenses and looking a little bewildered by her sudden, frantic actions.

"I wanted to make a swan," Lexa explained. "I realized…that my dishonesty is the real source of all my problems, and it has to go if I'm gonna go on. I want to change and become more _true_ to myself, more true to others."

Before she could ask to release it on the lake, the doorbell rang.

"Crap, that's probably Gage and his parents!" She dropped the pen and napkin like they were on fire and dove under the table. "Tell them I'm sick and I can't go to the competition."

Dad was stunned silent for a moment. "Didn't you just say you wanted to be more honest?"

"I-it…" Lexa scrambled for a loophole. "It doesn't count as my lie if you're the one saying it!"

She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard Dad walk off and open the door. As he went on to Gage's mother about how _terribly_ sick Lexa was, but how kind it was for her family to offer to drive her while he was doing some cottage housekeeping during the weekend, Lexa realized how her father was a much smoother, more refined liar than she was. He was the one who'd introduced the habit—and talent—to her in the first place, though, so this wasn't a surprise. That introduction hadn't been through just inheritance or example, however; Lexa's many faces first saw the light of day when her parents had started arguing. She'd learned soon enough that appealing to both sides was a much easier way to live than choosing from either. And that had meant lying until her pants were on fire, even long after their divorce.

There was a long stretch of silence after her father explained the situation and Lexa was tempted to peek from beneath the table. She crept cautiously forward along the kitchen walls, then let out a little gasp when her knees glided against a rounded object lying on the ground: the pen she'd dropped earlier. She staggered, turning to a nearby bookshelf for support.

Only, as soon as she'd touched it, there was no longer a bookshelf to support her.

She stumbled and fell sideways into the newly revealed opening. Where the bookshelf once stood, the doorway to another room loomed in its place. It was dark in there, too dark to see even with the light filtering through the kitchen. Shadows enveloped Lexa as she crawled in.

"Breezy, is that Rothbart coming?"

Lexa froze. She felt her blood curdle and turn to ice.

"Breezy, wake up, someone's coming!"

No, she couldn't have been mistaken the first time. There it was again. A pitchy girl's voice that couldn't possibly have been hers, and too close to be from anyone at the front door's.

Ever so slowly, she looked up. Catching some of the outside world's light was a single, silver birdcage seemingly dangling in mid-air. Lexa could barely make out the silhouettes of two birds, one of which was staring right at her with brilliant blue eyes.

_What the—_

"Lexa?"

This time it was her father's voice. No, perhaps the last things she'd heard had been from him, too.

_But what about this…room?_

This house was built along with the nearby cottages when Dad had bought the lakeside property a few years ago. Secret passages weren't a thing with newer buildings, right? So how come…

Lexa backed away from the doorway at lightning speed. From where she was sprawled before, the bookshelf snapped back into place.

Her dad chose that moment to return to the kitchen. "So why didn't you want them to drive you to your competition? They seemed perfectly friendly and—hey, what's wrong?"

Lexa struggled to stand up. "N-nothing, I just…why do you have this bookshelf in the kitchen?"

She could've sworn she saw Dad's eyes widen for a hushed heartbeat. "No particular reason. I just thought it'd spice up the décor a bit."

Lexa scanned the room's mismatched furniture and peeling wallpaper. Dad had never been one to care about "décor", but then, that actually kind of explained the bookshelf's presence. And he _did_ like his books; that they had in common.

"Listen," Dad said. "I'm guessing you're uncomfortable with Gage's family driving you, so how about I go with you to the competition instead?"

"Don't you have some guests coming to take care of?"

Dad shrugged. "I'll get one of my…employees to do it. Besides, now I feel bad for dumping you on others when this weekend could make some good father-daughter bonding time. So how about it? You still have your costumes and crap on you, right?"

"Right." Lexa gave the bookshelf one last look before she followed her father out.

* * *

><p>Whatever suspicions Lexa had about her dad disappeared with the weekend's passing. By Sunday evening, she was pretty sure she'd imagined the whole bookshelf and birds thing.<p>

Actual dancing had taken up very little of the weekend, and the little it had went extremely well. Lexa beamed when her troupe did the _glissades_ she'd suggested. She was pretty sure Gage had scowled doing them, though, which was _totally _the cause of their getting placed fourteenth. That was all she saw of him the three days though; she'd turned avoiding him into a game.

The rest of the time she'd spent loitering at various fast food joints with Dad. Their father-daughter bonding quota had definitely been filled, making up for all the lost time she usually spent at her mother's. He even let her order room service from the hotel, which Mom never did. The rides to and from the competition venue had been brimming with tall tales from Dad's clients.

He was a good storyteller—every good liar was—but tended to avoid stories about his own past. Lexa knew next to nothing about her father's beginnings, but figured his silence over the subject was more telling than anything.

Anyway, she left his house that Sunday feeling a lot happier than she had in a while. She didn't know _what _she was going to do at school tomorrow, but if Dad had been able to survive his apparently unspeakably terrible childhood, then she could make it through the rest of junior high.

_Darn! _Lexa realized with a start._ I never got to release my swan, did I? _It was a stupid superstition, but if Lexa really did want to overcome her habit…

_Well, I'll need all the help I can get tomorrow. Maybe the swan will act like a good luck charm…_ She was lying to herself and she knew it. The only swan she was after was the one in the bookshelf's passageway.

* * *

><p>After checking that he was indeed out for dinner, sneaking back into Dad's house was easy; who <em>actually <em>kept spare keys under the doormat? She flung her bags onto the porch and went in.

The bookshelf budged as easily as it had before, giving way to the same pitch-black expanse. This time Lexa had the sense to turn on her cellphone's flashlight.

The silver birdcage from Friday welcomed her almost immediately after the light blinked on, along with its two bird inhabitants. The cage wasn't floating in mid-air after all, it seemed. If you looked closely, you could see fishing wire attached to the handle, securing it from the ceiling. So with that out of the way, maybe she'd just imagined the bird's speech…

"Princess! Was this the girl you were talking about?"

_The girl you were _talking _about. _This time, it was the other bird talking. A…robin?

The one who'd spoken last time, a gorgeous white swan, nodded. At least, Lexa was pretty sure she was nodding. "Doesn't she resemble me, Breezy? If she was older and had blonde hair."

"I…" Where the birds had one too many, Lexa had no words. She felt faint. "How can a human look like a swan?"

The swan leaned in close so that her beak was poking through the cage's bars. "No, no. I mean you resemble me when _I_ was human. Before Rothbart's spell."

"Rothbart?" Lexa's head spun. "Like…Bart Roth? My dad's name?"

"Your _dad_'s name?!" the robin—Breezy—echoed. Her voice was shriller than the swan's, younger and more hyper. "Aww, Princess, this is Rothbart's daughter! I didn't know he had one, but you were right; she's another one of his cronies. Looks like we're not getting rescued any time soon. Clouds, no wonder you look alike. She's your cousin."

_Cronies? Cousin? _If her dad's side of the family consisted of birds, Lexa could understand why he didn't like to talk about it. Family reunions must have been amazing.

"Can you guys…can you please tell me what's going on?" She waved her phone around wildly, searching for any hidden cameras. The room looked like an enlarged jail cell, with a staircase that went downstairs.

Lexa didn't remember having a basement.

"Well," the swan said, "if you aren't working for your father, we were hoping you'd let us out. I understand that that may place you in an inconvenient position, but it's been half a year since we've been trapped, and the fate of the Cloud Kingdom hinges on our freedom."

"Princess!" Breezy hissed. "Are you crazy? She just said that she's Rothbart's daughter. This is probably all just some elaborate ploy to get you to reveal Falcon's Spellbind."

"Breezy," the swan started soothingly. "This may be the only chance we have at escape, and the only chance the Kingdom has at winning the war against Rothbart. I don't care what tricks he has; I can't recall Falcon's Spellbind any more than I can recall my own."

There was that word again. Lexa voiced one of the many questions wearing down on her sanity: "Wh-what's a Spellbind?"

"A single quality one wishes they possessed," the swan replied. "It's usually the response to a fatal flaw. The desire to change oneself holds a very special power, one unique to its owner. It is like a key to their identity, an identity that can be altered if the Spellbind falls into the hands of someone possessing magic."

_So it's like the words we write on the paper swans. _"A quality you wished you possessed…I think I have one of those. But wait, is that what happened to you two? Spellbind falling into the wrong hands? You mentioned, um, this 'Rothbart' casting a spell on you before. Did he use your Spellbinds against you?"

"Yes, he used mine against my whole kingdom." Lexa wasn't sure how a swan's expression could darken, but this one's did. "I lost my memories when Rothbart attacked me as a child, you see, in his attempt to take the throne. I've been trying to remember my old Spellbind ever since. We're constrained to one for life, but the five-year-old I once was is a stranger to me. Because I couldn't remember the Spellbind, I could never unlock my due power as the Cloud Kingdom's crown princess."

"When Rothbart, your father, returned last year," she went on, "he used my lost Spellbind to turn all those in the Cloud Kingdom without Spellbinds of their own into helpless birds like us, or monsters called 'harpies' to join his army. Breezy would be a victim of the former, as would more than half of our population."

"He turned literally you into _foul_ creatures," Lexa blurted. Then she blushed. "S-sorry, I just…"_ I barely understand what you're talking about, but are you sure it's about my dad? The one I fed McDonald's fries to pigeons with yesterday?_

"It's fine," said the swan, "wordplay like that would make you quite the Spellbreaker back home, cousin."

"Call me Lexa."

The swan nodded. "Alright. And you may refer to me as Princess Odette. Beside me is Lady and Knight-in-Training Brianna Von Schwarzfels."

The robin looked pained. "Breezy, please. Princess, look, if we're actually going to trust her, then she needs to bust us out quick before Rothbart gets back."

"Of course. Lexa, would you please take us downstairs? The keys to the cage are there."

Lexa responded to Odette's request by pocketing her phone and yanking the birdcage off of its wire. It was heavier than it looked and she had a hard time balancing it on her way down the stairs.

She wasn't sure what was more surprising: this situation, or how easily she was going along with it all. Helping others, though, that was familiar territory, and she was always eager to do it. Even if she had no idea what she was actually doing.

The stairs themselves were steel and simple, the ladder-like sort with just planks and no risers in between. They reminded Lexa of the ones you saw backstage at theatres, ugly old things that gave way to wings and the true show center-stage.

And what a show it was that awaited her.

The room above had nothing on this one. Ink black brambles ran up its blood-red walls and onto the ceiling, where they formed a shaky chandelier that bathed the lair in a ghostly purple glow. Wooden shelves stock full of books stood tall next to Lexa like a maze as she wove through. In one corner was a life-sized birdcage identical to the one she held in her hand. An ornate, throne-like seat sat opposite a desk turned high tech control panel at the back, which didn't go at all with the Hot Topic Phase I'll Regret In Two Years 'décor' the rest of the massive space had going.

What stole the show, though, was the glass screen behind the panel.

It took up the entire back wall and even the relentless brambles made way for the sight of blue water that flowed beyond the screen. It looked like Dad had swiped an aquarium exhibit and plopped it down here for his own enjoyment.

But no…this was no exhibit. If Lexa were to break this glass window and swim out, she'd find herself in the depths of Swan Lake.

It was far from the only question she had, but she still wondered why Dad had this screen set up. Swan Lake had literally no wildlife to observe. In fact, birds steered clear of even flying above it.

She looked down into the water. The lake was deeper than she'd thought. And beneath it all was a blur of white, swirling around like an underwater whirlpool. It was mesmerizing.

"That's the portal to the Cloud Kingdom."

"What?"

"The Cloud Kingdom," Odette repeated. "The world where we came from. This lake is a gateway to it. After he killed my parents and attacked me, Rothbart was chased by our royal guards, the Pretty Cure, into the palace pond, which is our side of the bridge. It was assumed that he was dead, but instead he'd turned up here, in this lake. I can only guess he had you sometimes afterwards."

"I see," Lexa said, though she didn't really. Every mention of her dad—no, this "Rothbart" character that wasn't even close to the man that had taken her to her dance competition—caught her off-guard and seemed to drown out the importance of whatever else Odette was saying. "Where are the keys you were talking about?"

"Ah, I see them right there!" Breezy chirped, flapping her wings excitedly.

Lexa followed her gaze. "I don't see any keys."

All she saw were wand-like trinkets lying haphazardly on the control panel, beside a pile of unfolded paper swans. They were white, with teal accents on one and hot pink on the other. Roughly the length of rulers (_so thirty centimeters...obviously_), they were each tipped with delicately carved birds. Tiny gemstones decorated the birds' eyes, and Lexa was reminded of the cane Dad always carried, with the unusual owl near the grip.

"They're called Sky Scepters," Breezy said enthusiastically. "They're given to nobles like the Princess and I back home. _Those_ are ours, actually. Rothbart took them away when he trapped us. They're like wands; they give you the ability to perform magic. Anyone can perform spells with 'em if they know the target's Spellbind, or if the target doesn't have one, but they're even cooler if you know your own. You can transform into a Pretty Cure then, just like the royal guards. And you'd be able to _break_ spells."

Lexa blinked. "So because Odette doesn't know her Spellbind, she can't reverse the kingdom's spells?"

"Right, and since she's the only one powerful enough to break them all at once—"

Odette interrupted, "Since I'm the only one _potentially _powerful enough to break them all at once, it is absolutely crucial that we escape so I can find my bind and transform."

Lexa sat the birdcage down on the panel and grabbed the scepters. "Right, sorry. What do I do with these again?"

"Take one and hold it up to the cage," the swan instructed. "All you'll have to do is draw a heart shape with the Sky Scepter. It's very simple since this cage doesn't have a Spellbind."

Lexa followed suit with the teal Scepter, squinting at the swan carving sitting on top as she traced a heart in the air. The birdcage snapped open the moment she finished, falling to the ground just as the pair of birds fell out. While Breezy took flight the second she was out of the cage's bounds, Odette landed awkwardly on the cement floor with a _thud_.

Breezy was by her side immediately. "Ahhh! Princess, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's just my wing."

Lexa hadn't noticed it before, but the swan's left wing was bent at an awkward angle.

"It's a wound from when Rothbart attacked me as a child," she explained. "I have scratches all over my left arm in human form, too. I can move the wing a little, but I can't fly." The swan paused. "Anyway, I can't thank you enough for helping us. We are very much indebted to you."

"It's, um, it's no problem."

"It would be with your dad," said Breezy. "Now that we're out, we can find the kid with the Princess' Spellbind and win the war against him. I don't think you see what a big thing you just did here."

Her beady robin eyes widened all of a sudden and she began shaking in her feathers. A shadow fell over the group.

"S-speaking of big things…_Harpy!_"

Lexa whipped around to find herself face to face with the most hideous creature she'd ever seen.

It looked like someone had thrown a crow and a man into a blender and pressed purée. Muscular arms melted into black wings and its bare chest clashed with the spindly bird legs beneath it. Most horrifying of all, though, was the face atop the monster. It wasn't just the large bill protruding where a nose should've been, but the bloodcurdling familiarity of the features behind it.

_Officer Reyes._

Lexa thought back to the life-sized birdcage she'd seen earlier and wasn't all that shocked to see that it was now, indeed, open.

"_Intruder…" _The monster sounded chillingly similar to the man he once was.

"H-hey! I'm not actually an intruder. This is my house, you know?"

The harpy didn't seem to care; it just lunged at her. Lexa's paralyzing fear gave way to blind adrenaline. She tried hitting its beak with the scepter she had, but that only succeeded in angering it. Between fight and flight, the former clearly wasn't an option, so she ducked left and bolted for the stairs.

But the harpy was too fast. It charged forward, propelled by its broad wings. The next thing Lexa knew, she'd been chased into its cage, with nowhere else to run.

It was all going to be over as soon as it'd started, not unlike Lexa's pathetic little life. Her legs collapsed and she braced herself for the end.

"Use a Sky Scepter!"

It was Odette yelling, from all the way across the room.

"Take one and write your Spellbind in the air. You said you had one, didn't you? Write it and then say _'Pretty Cure! Spell Start!'_"

When Lexa didn't obey immediately, she added, "Hurry! You want to live long enough to fulfill your Spellbind, right?"

"…Right."

Yes, she wanted to break out of this cage, this basement, and then she wanted to live long enough to break out of all the walls she'd put up with her lies. She wanted to live on until the word 'true' applied to every word she said. Everything she did from now on, she wanted to truly mean it.

Lexa stood up. She still had the scepter in her hand and her knuckles were white from gripping it too tight. Her watering eyes met the harpy's defiantly.

The harpy just looked confused, like, _why isn't she cowering? Where are my screams? _Lexa took the opportunity to raise the scepter up and trace four simple letters, her Spellbind:

_True._

She'd told herself once that she wanted to be like Swan Lake, which was said to reflect one's ideal self, a perfect world. She'd wanted to be that for people, so she always gave compliments she didn't mean, sprouted off white lies when she wanted to present people with a better reality. All her lies were wayward wishes, a reflection of what people wanted to hear, what _she _wantedthem to hear. But just like a spell, they always wore off eventually, broken by the inescapable truth.

The truth wasn't permanent, either, though. It could always be altered—she understood that now. Lexa didn't have to use words to obscure reality any more. She could make reality itself better, change things just as she herself changed as soon she called out, _"Pretty Cure! Spell start!"_

The cursive 'true', which had been hovering in mid-air before, multiplied, until all around Lexa were swirls of translucent letters. They came in all at once to envelope her in a blue searing light. She waved her scepter around and as she did, her jeans and T-shirt melted into an intricate white dress. She had fun with it, throwing some ballet moves in as her socks morphed into point-shoe-like white slippers with wings on either side. She tested them out with a _tour en l'air _that turned her hair from brown into blonde, pulling itself up into a wavy side pony.

The cage the harpy had backed her into shattered during the transformation, leaving shards of silver in its wake. Lexa stood tall in the middle of it all and struck a daring pose, scepter still in hand.

"Reflecting one's true self! With the grace of the swan, I am Cure Ciel!"

* * *

><p><strong><span>Preview:<span>**

"_I've transformed now, but how do I fight this monster? Any advice, Breezy?"_

"Forget about the monster, what about your dad? What'll you do when he comes in?"

"_Maybe he won't recognize me in this get-up."_

"Or maybe he'll recognize you as Princess Odette instead. Then it'd just be up to you to keep the act up, huh?"

"_Well, I still can't believe this 'Rothbart' you speak of and my dad are one and the same…"_

**Next time: Ciel's Secret! Reading Between the Lies**


	2. Episode 2

**Episode 2: Ciel's Secret! Reading Between the Lies**

* * *

><p>You'd think the harpy would be more impressed.<p>

But, nope, Lexa's transformation distracted the monster for roughly 2.6 seconds before he lunged at her once more. This time, she dodged deftly, spun around, and gave a kick at its stomach, right where man and bird intercepted. The harpy fell on its back and moved its wings feebly around in its struggle to get back up, like it was making a snow angel in the birdcage's rubble.

She wasn't sure who was more surprised at the kick: herself or the harpy. If anything, it bought her time to choke out, "What…is even going on right now?"

"You've used my old Sky Scepter to become a Pretty Cure," Odette explained, waddling over with Breezy not far behind. Pride lined her usual monotone like the silver lining the floor. "It's the only way you'll be able to break the spell on that monster. Usually it's fine to just trace a heart like you did earlier on a target with no Spellbind, but with harpies you'll have to subdue it first."

Before Lexa—or Cure Ciel, so said the words she barely remembered spouting from her mouth—could reply, the harpy had sprung back up. She clenched her Scepter tighter and looked back at her cousin. "Subdue that thing a bit, and then we can get Officer Reyes back?"

"Assuming that's who this harpy once was, yes. Your wand will begin blinking when the spell is ready to break. Until then, fight with everything you've got. You'll find doing so much easier in this form. And any damage done to this monster, luckily, will not affect the original human."

Breezy added, "Ooh, try pressing that egg-shaped button on the Scepter if you have the chance!"

Cure Ciel did not have the chance. The harpy was coming at her once more, with Officer Reyes' handsome features twisted into a beak-tipped scowl. She met its slashing wing with her Scepter, parrying it like a sword master.

Only she was no master; her newfound strength still crumbled beneath the weight of the wing and she had to drop her wand. She readied herself for the wing's impact…

But it never came.

Instead, she found herself floating. No joke. She was literally rising higher and higher every second, until her blonde hair brushed the ceiling and her feet was dangling at the harpy's beak below. On them were the slippers her socks had dissolved into, with the fluffy white wings on each side. Those very wings were what was keeping her in the air, albeit unsteadily, and what was keeping her away from the harpy's own, far more lethal wings.

_Well, at least now I can brag to people that I have Hermès shoes. Kind of. _

The harpy gave up on attacking her in the same record time it'd taken it to digest Cure Ciel's appearance. Instead, it bent over to pick the swan-tipped Sky Scepter up with its large beak, chewing experimentally.

Ciel's flying-induced giddiness gave way to horror. She didn't need Breezy and Odette's anguished screaming from below to know that the harpy gobbling up her Scepter would not be a stellar development.

Somehow, the sight of a crow (or crow-like creature, putting it generously) with something in its mouth reminded Ciel of an Aesop fable her father used to read to her. She recalled how the harpy had been able to speak before, with its startling cry of "intruder." An idea popped into her mind, pushing even the terrible thought of Dad's involvement in all of this out from her head.

"Oh, Mr. Harpy, you do look lovely today."

She leaned leisurely onto the top of a bookshelf and propped her cocked head with an elbow. "Just _what _are you using on your feathers that is making them so glossy? Whatever it is, it is _working_, let me tell you, just like that diet you must be on. What did it consist of again?"

The harpy didn't respond. It just fixed Cure Ciel with a quizzical, expectant look; similar to the one Odette was wearing. If she was getting a reaction out of anyone, it would be Breezy, who was burying her little birdbrain into her wings like the avian-equivalent of a facepalm.

She tried again. "Say, I heard only a select breed of harpies have the ability to talk. The elite of the elite. Is it true? Are you one of them?"

Now the harpy looked like it was short-circuiting.

Finally, it opened its mouth. "_Intruder! Intruder intruder intruder. Intruder? Intruder, intruder..."_

Ignoring the ceaseless, senseless words—or word, rather—Cure Ciel swooped down and caught her Scepter right as it fell from the harpy's beak. She landed gracefully in first position by the bookshelf she'd been leaning on. She held onto the worn wood like a bar with one hand, while her other gripped her wand. She pressed the egg-shaped button on the Scepter as Breezy had instructed.

"Sky Scepter—bow mode!"

In a flash of blue, the ends of the wand began elongating, curving into a bow. Already on the bowstring was a stunning golden arrow, its vane a single white feather like the ones on Odette. The tip was a heart, which Ciel found adorable since a heart, incidentally, was right where this baby was going.

She flew up and crouched on top of the bookshelf, squinting to aim. She'd tried archery at a summer camp once, but her arrow had literally landed five centimeters away back then due to her lack of strength. The missing power from back then seemed to course through her now thanks to this transformation, its only barrier being the familiarity of the harpy's face.

Her hands shook. No, there could be no hesitation. She leveled her gaze and readjusted her left glove before taking aim again. Odette had been sure to mention that Officer Reyes would not be hurt in this process.

Her arrow sliced through the air, easily piercing the harpy right in its chest. There was an ensuing _squawk _of pain that made Ciel flinch.

"Now, Cure Ciel!"

Breezy had flown beside her and was gesturing wildly with her wings at her Sky Scepter, which had turned back into its wand form. The teal eyes of the swan on top lit up, blinking like a firefly trying to communicate. With the wand and a flourish, Ciel drew a blue heart in the air.

"_Pretty Cure! SPELLBREAK!"_

The heart grew, like a wave gaining size and momentum right before it crashed onto the shore. The shore, in this case, would be the harpy, whose sharp squawking subsided immediately after the finisher made contact. The arrow in its chest vanished and the monstrous crow features coating Officer Reyes dissolved, until there was just an unconscious, but otherwise unharmed, man left. His head landed onto the cement with as he fell over.

"Well," Breezy chirped, "that's probably the only _lasting_ damage he'll get."

"Will he remember anything?" Ciel flew down and bent to inspect him. She felt hollow as her adrenaline rush began fading out.

Only, that hadn't been _all_ adrenaline, had it? No…while she was fairly athletic, no scare in the world could've prompted any of that from her without an extra push. Whatever turning into a "Pretty Cure" had done, she felt like she'd just chugged down a barrel full of nuclear Red Bull. And that, for now, was numbing her over until she could make sense of this situation.

Or she could just delude herself until the end of time. She'd promised to tell the truth to others from then on, but had she mentioned anything about facing it herself?

"No," Breezy replied, "he won't remember. And thank the Clouds the spell was broken before any of Rothbart's lackeys could've taken him to the Cloud Kingdom."

Ciel was about to ask why this Rothbart guy would've done _that _when she noticed a spec of silver beneath Officer Reyes' arm. Her hand felt something cold and she held up her finding to the room's purplish light. It wasn't a piece of the broken birdcage like she'd thought, but a trinket the size and shape of an egg, with enough tiny, but intricate details to pass as a Fabergé. Pearls traced a swirly design around the circumference.

"That's a Birdie Bomb," Breezy said, answering Ciel's unspoken question. _What an unfortunate name._

"They're left behind by Harpies," Odette explained, "though usually much more powerful ones since they're often residue from a Spellbind's magic. Each has a little charm that lasts anywhere from ten minutes to forever. You can activate it by cracking it open, as you would a regular egg."

"Like this?"

"Don't—"

Too late. Ciel had already flung the egg onto the ground like a bouncy ball. Instantly, the birds' identical looks of horror faded into thin air. Where Odette and Breezy had stood before lay the Birdie Bomb, open cleanly in the middle like those plastic eggs dollar stores sold every Easter. "Wh-where'd you go?"

"It must have been an invisibility charm," came Odette's voice from seemingly nowhere.

Breezy let out a long whistle. "Holy feathers, Princess, can you imagine all the possibilities we have right now?"

Before anyone could respond, footsteps thundered from above, getting louder as they traveled down the stairs.

Acting on pure instinct, Ciel pressed the bow mode button on her Sky Scepter and aimed at the stairway. Ready to fire.

What she wasn't ready for, though, was whom she'd be firing at.

_Dad?_

"Rothbart," Breezy breathed.

* * *

><p>It had been a pleasant if unexpected weekend for Bart.<p>

Ever since their divorce, he'd let Lexa stay with Carolyn for the most part. Starting otherworldly wars generally didn't mix well with fatherhood, and it was for their daughter's own good that she didn't mix with any of that either.

Still, it had been refreshing to act like a normal dad for a few days; going on a road trip, watching dance performances, eating at fast food restaurants for a treat…It reminded Bart why he was doing what he did, even if nothing could bring back his happiest days; the endless bedtimes stories he used to tell, their infinite number of family outings, and the look of wonder across five-year-old Lexa's face when he'd given her a music box for Christmas and told her he'd signed her up for ballet classes.

It surprised him that The Curse hadn't interrupted the weekend like it usually did whenever he was feeling even a _bit _content. Leverage for later, he supposed, but he was still relieved.

Speaking of later, he'd have to make up for the lack of new harpies created this coming week. The Pretty Cure back home were putting up more of a fight than he thought they would when he began his invasion six months ago. The advantage of being able to restock his army at any time was the only thing that stood against their iron wills, a fact he hadn't neglected to remind his team when he'd met with them a few minutes ago.

J had smirked at that. "When did you come to that conclusion, at your daughter's ballet recital?"

"Watch it, woman," his newest recruit had grunted, "I don't like that condescending tone about ballet."

"This meeting is going nowhere," the last one had sighed, and Bart had been inclined to agree, which was why he'd called it off early.

And it was a good thing he had, because otherwise he would have missed his niece making her escape.

His dark eyes widened at the sight of seeing Odette as a human once more, then narrowed and steeled. He raised his cane and felt its scraggly wood turn into the shiny surface of his Sky Scepter. If he had any questions, he could ask them later.

A ball of energy materialized at the tip of his wand, and he let it fly forward to knock Odette's weapons right from her hand.

Odette had been shaking behind her bow, stunned speechless. She looked younger than he remembered, though that could probably be owed to how she was practically folding into herself then.

Bart chuckled. "I don't know how you broke the spell, but did you really think you could escape, Odette?"

"N-no," she spluttered out finally. Her voice was unnaturally high. "I—I'm so sorry, I can explain…I…wait, _Odette?!_"

"He called her Odette," came a voice from somewhere inside Bart's lair. "I can't believe he just called her Odette." His eyes darted around the room, but the only other possible source of speech was the pathetic police officer lying on the ground. It must have been that annoying robin, then. Her family had always grated on his nerves, and she was no exception.

Not that it mattered. He pressed the button on his Scepter so that it extended into a longer staff and conjured a more powerful spell that matched the room's purple glow. Odette yelped as she dodged the streak of light. Bart cursed under his breath—the swearing kind, not the magical.

He was going too easy. He needed to stop her as soon as possible. For all the surprises these past few days, one of his underlings could walk in on this at any moment and discover the lies regarding his niece's death. And if she'd recalled her Spellbind, then maybe she could tell him something else…

At this thought, Bart's blood boiled, and the reason behind his rage literally came to surface.

* * *

><p>A giant owl monster. That's what her father was now.<p>

Ciel's dad had turned into an owl harpy.

Bart Roth, father of Lexa Roth, was now a giant owl, complete with grey feathers and impossibly large eyes.

_Put it any way you want, it still sounds crazy. _

And it was only about to get crazier.

Bookshelves shook as the monster lumbered forward. It was different than the harpy Ciel had fought before; with the tacked on parts of an owl instead of a crow, yes, but bigger as well, with less recognizably human features. If it weren't for the fact that she'd just witnessed his transformation, Ciel would never have connected the monster that stood before her to Bart Roth. And she would never have connected the latter to the Rothbart the birds had spoken of, either.

They say that seeing is believing. But right then, she didn't know _what_ to believe. It all felt surreal.

That was when a ball of purple energy was sent her way from the monster's staff was holding, hitting her square between her eyes. She fell back, dazed. _Okay, _that _felt real._

"Cure Ciel!" Breezy's voice rang out from somewhere above her. Ciel noted vaguely how the robin wasn't referring to her as Lexa nor Odette, who'd been silent this entire time. "We need to get the heck out of duck _now. _You don't stand a chance against him."

Ciel was rubbing her forehead in a feeble attempt to stop the pain. "I don't know what's going on, but…I need to turn him back. Just like how I turned Officer Reyes back."

"No, Ciel." The robin's usual cheerful lilt was nowhere to be heard, gone along with her physical form. "That won't work. This isn't like the harpy from before. Your dad's Cursed. He's like this of his own free will. Just like how you transformed to fight, he's turned into _that _to defeat who he thinks is the Princess."

Ciel felt like a kindergartener being explained a simple concept in a language she didn't understand.

Time to think this over was a luxury she couldn't afford, though. Actually, from the looks of it, she didn't have any time at all.

With the free hand that was jutting out from beneath its left wing, the owl had picked up the arrow she'd dropped before and was rushing towards her to stab the sharp point _straight into her chest_.

But then it stopped short.

"_Lexa…?" _the creature drawled. What began as an inhuman grunt faded into the voice she'd spent her weekend with. The arrow tumbled from its hands—seriously, what was with this family and dropping weapons?—as it reached up to grip its own head, stumbling. Its form flickered, flashing from the monster to Ciel's father to the monster all over again.

Ciel remained still this entire time, shell-shocked, with her palms still planted on her forehead and bottom glued to the ground. It wasn't like being cornered by the harpy before, where Lexa hadn't been able to fight; here, it was the question of _would _she fight?

"We need to leave now!"

Odette. That was Odette yelling. Ciel's anchor in a hurricane, the real Odette. Luckily, the monster appeared to be too pre-occupied with whatever identity crisis it was having to notice.

"Cousin, snap out of it! Before Rothbart does."

"…Right." Ciel rose up, reaching for her Scepter.

"Quick," Breezy shouted, "take the police officer! And the two Sky Scepters, too! I'll take…your cousin."

Ciel obeyed detachedly, adding _how can a robin drag a full-sized swan up stairs?_ to her growing mental list of questions.

* * *

><p>Sleep had come instantly for Lexa.<p>

She vaguely remembered turning back into her regular self after staggering out of Dad's house and into the woodland surrounding the lake. She didn't know how she'd made it home, just that she had _eventually_, much to the relief of her mother.

She woke to the sound of chirping from outside, which—_ugh. _If she never saw a bird again, it would be too soon.

What too soon really turned out to be, though, was the next second.

"You're up!" something trilled. Lexa rubbed her eyes as a little robin came into focus.

The girl shot up, kicking her baby blue blankets off in the process. "Who are _you_?"

"Breezy." The robin blinked. "Er, Lexa? We kinda went through this yesterday. Unless…did Rothbart's attack do anything to your head?"

"No." This couldn't be true. "Nonononono…No! That was all a dream! A dream!" A nightmare, really. The whole transformation bit, kicking butt, _that _had been awesome. But everything extending to her dad, well that…

"What a delayed reaction," Breezy commented. "Welp, I was wondering why you were so quiet afterwards. Denial doesn't last forever, I guess~"

Still under the Birdie Bomb's effects, she and Odette must have followed her into the house yesterday. Breezy was fully visible now, though. _The only thing weirder than seeing a bird talk, _Lexa thought dazedly,_ is seeing a bird talk in your own bedroom. _Wildlife didn't suit her unapologetically girly throw rugs and the signed _So You Think You Can Dance_ posters lining her pastel walls. Wait, what was Breezy saying about deluding herself while more pressing matters were at hand?

"Good morning, Lexa."

Odette toddled in through the doorway, kicking the strange meter up a notch without a white feather out of place. "Your mother—that would be my aunt, I suppose—just received a call saying that Mr. Reyes returned home safely this morning. She left your home in quite the rush."

"That's good to hear, Odette," Lexa managed to respond.

"Aww, c'mon," Breezy whined, "of course she remembers _your _name!"

"S-sorry..." Lexa stared down at the checkered pattern on her panama bottoms. "I-I mean, shouldn't you guys be heading home? To your nest or flock or-what did you call it, the Cloud Kingdom?" Right. The sooner they left, the sooner Lexa could put this whole thing past her.

The birds looked at each other. "We were discussing that earlier, actually," Odette finally said. "Now that we're free, we're free to go back, and as much as we'd love to—Breezy especially since her parents are still there—we can't. We would never make it past Swan Lake under Rothbart's watchful eye, especially now that he believes I've rediscovered my Spellbind and can break most of the Kingdom's spells if I returned. We also have reason..."

"More like just vague visions and possibly fake memories," Breezy scoffed, which Odette pointedly ignored.

"...To believe that the only person alive who currently knows my Spellbind-"

"Let's just call him Odette's old penpal," Breezy interrupted once more from her spot on Lexa's headboard. "Or, ooh, I know, how about 'Spellboy'? Kinda sounds like spellbook, y'know? Has more of a ring than Grimoire Guy."

"...Currently resides in this world," Odette continued. "Perhaps even nearby, if we're lucky. And hopefully, by the time we have tracked this 'Spellboy' down, your father will have lowered his defences."

Lexa swallowed. "My father...as in Rothbart?"

Breezy let out a sharp chirp of frustration. "Have you still not wrapped your head around that yet? Even after what you saw yesterday? Even _after_ he attacked you?"

"I still have no idea what I saw yesterday," Lexa said evenly. "And Officer Reyes attacked me, too. Doesn't mean he killed his sister or started a war in some fantasy world or whatever else this Rothbart guy does."

"You know what he does, Lexa?" Breezy gave the wood she was perched on an angry peck. "Asides from all of that? He takes people from your world to turn them into harpies that fight for him. Brainwashed harpies that fight for him in our so-called fantasy world."

"What?" Lexa turned to Odette for confirmation.

"I'm afraid uncle's armies consist largely of people from this world." She bowed her head, apologetic. "That man you broke the spell on was a temporary guard for Rothbart's, ah, hideout, but given a week he would've been in the Cloud Kingdom, blindly attacking what forces of good we have left in that monstrous form."

_All of Sorrel's disappearances..._ Lexa had to lean back on her headboard for support. _That was all him? And they all got turned into harpies?_ All of this Cloud Kingdom bird stuff Lexa could accept, as unbelievable as it was, because it was just added awareness about some far-off place she'd never see. It was irrelevant to her life, disconnected.

But everything else twisted the way she perceived things she thought she already knew. It was harder to accept that change than to accept brand new knowledge.

_No. My dad...he isn't a bad man. I mean, sure he gets mad at the drop of a hat, and he's kinda strange locking himself up all the time, but he's not...he wouldn't go to _that far_. I mean, even if what they're saying is true, he stopped himself from stabbing me with that arrow yesterday, didn't he?_

_Because he thought you looked like Lexa at the last moment, _answered a cursed voice at the back of her mind.

_Because I am Lexa._

_Because he was perfectly fine with hurting his niece, but not his daughter._

The doorbell rang then, plucking Lexa out from her black hole of thoughts.

"You might want to hide," she told the birds before going to answer the door. She nearly burst out laughing when she saw who it was.

"Good morning, Lexa," her father greeted. In his hands and out of place was her luggage, which he set down through the doorway before entering himself. "You left these on my porch yesterday."

Lexa goggled at the bags. _Crap!_ He must've figured out what she'd done, something that was barely dawning on herself.

Dad scratched his goatee. "It was pretty terrible of me to expect you to walk home carrying all that, though, huh? Anyway, the homework you did during the weekend was in there, so I figured you'd need that."

_Phew, he didn't catch on!_ "I...hah...no, thank you! I totally forgot about them."

Just as Lexa was positive he'd turn to leave, he just _had _to turn and add, "Oh, and about yesterday! You went straight home as soon as I left, right? No dilly-dallying around town?"

"I...Of course I didn't dilly-dally!" Lexa wasn't sure why she felt so guilty, not why she sounded so shrill.

"That's good to hear." Dad leaned forward, so that his tall shadow seemed to consume Lexa's small frame. His eyes were dark behind his glasses. There were bags underneath; he was looking pretty dishevelled in general, actually. "You know, with all the disappearances lately, you can never be too careful. There's dangerous people out there, Lex-people not like us." He paused. "I don't know what's been bugging you lately, why you were so eager to jot down your Spellbind, but just know that it's not a big deal compared to what else is out there. Nothing else matters to me but your safety, so be wary and stay out of things you don't understand."

It took every fibber of Lexa's being not to flinch. "I'll keep all of that in mind!"

"So...you didn't come back to my house after you left?"

"O-of course not." The lie was so transparent, but Dad seemed to believe it. He nodded. _It's what he wanted to hear._

"It must have really been her then..." His words were barely a whisper.

_Now_ she began to laugh. "Jeez, Dad, what's gotten into you? Nothing's going to happen!"

He stepped back. "Ha, you're right. I guess I'm just getting old. Well, you have a good day then!"

"I will!" Lexa plastered on a smile, one she kept on until he was out of sight…

"It's all true..." She slammed the door and slid down to the floor.

The birds were beside her in an instant. Breezy twiddled, "What's true?"

"What you and...my cousin were saying. My dad was acting really weird just now, which isn't actually that out of the ordinary, except...he mentioned Spellbinds. I know for a fact that he did." Lexa buried her face in her pajama's soft sleeves. Whatever happened, there was always the option of never coming back up again.

No. She had already spent all of Friday throwing her pity party, over matters that weren't a 'big deal' after all.

She was through with it now. She looked up.

"Hey, yesterday, what did I turn into again? The thing with the winged shoes and arrows?"

"It's called being a Pretty Cure," Odette replied slowly.

"Ah, w-well, if you wouldn't mind, Odette, can I keep on being that? A Pretty Cure? I know that that's your Sky Scepter I was using, so..."

The swan had to think for a moment. "I wouldn't mind at all. But...why?"

"I'd like to keep on doing what I did with Officer Reyes." The words were out of Lexa's mouth before she could think them over. Not that she needed to. "Turning people back into their human selves, reversing the havoc my dad's wreaking. The next time he tries to make a harpy, I'll be waiting there with my bow and arrow. I won't let them get anywhere near Swan Lake. I know...that it doesn't make what he's doing better. But hopefully it'll make at least a little difference."

Odette wrapped her wings around Lexa in what she figured was a hug. "Oh, sweetie, you know you don't have to make up for any of Uncle's actions."

Lexa shook her head as she tried to return the embrace. "That's not what I'm trying to do. I mean, honestly, I feel bad for you and Breezy, but most of what you've said Dad's done is kind of unreal for me. The disappearances in Sorrel aren't, though. I really want to prevent them from happening anymore."

"Also," she went on, "when I lie, I never get the benefit of the doubt. People always accuse me of manipulating them, when all I want is to make them happy, even if it's over something fake, even if it's temporary. I don't think lying's, like, inherently bad...I mean, what Dad's doing is pretty awful, inherently or otherwise, b-but...I'm sure there's reasoning behind it. Maybe this way I can understand it." Not a justification, but a rationalization. Where did Rothbart end, and where did Dad begin? She needed his side of the truth to better understand the situation, and then she could revaluate.

Breezy flew over then; Lexa hadn't noticed her absence, but she'd probably gone to retrieve the white pen that was dangling from her beak. She spat it out by Lexa. "Clouds, are you always that pretentious?"

Lexa picked the pen up. "Where'd this come from?"

"It's the Sky Scepter you asked for," Breezy chirped. "It's just in this, like, sealed form right now. The way Rothbart's cane usually is! If you press that egg on top, like a regular clicker pen, it'll hatch into the swan that'll let you transform."

"And you might want to continue pretending to be me when you do," Odette advised. "I can't imagine what Uncle's reaction would be if he found out his own daughter had turned against him."  
><em><br>_Lexa was tempted to start laughing again. Of course this would happen right after her resolution to become more honest. Now she was harbouring the mother (or father, she guessed) of all secrets. _I wouldn't call it 'turning against', though. And it wouldn't be any worse than my reaction when I found out Dad's a real-life, cross-worldly super villain—_

_"Koo koo! Koo koo!"_

She gasped. Mom insisted on keeping this crazy annoying cuckoo clock that she'd gotten at a garage sale years ago. Lexa hated it, but right then it was her life-saver.

"Gaaaah, no, I'm late for school!"

Breezy had the audacity to giggle. "Kinda funny how you can take down a freaky crow monster, but that cuckoo bird'll still get you down, eh?"

_So that cuckoo bird'll get me down_, Lexa thought as she scrambled up, _but all that drama last Friday won't anymore._ It all seemed silly now, in the wake of all that had happened.

"You're not like those Disney princess birds that can cook and do laundry, are you?" she teased. "Because some toast to shove up my mouth while I run for my life would be lovely."

* * *

><p><span><strong>Preview:<strong>

"Hey, Breezy, I get why my dad captured Odette, but is there a special reason you were held captive, too?"

"What are you trying to say, Lexa, that I'm not valuable enough for captivity?"

"N-no, that's not what I meant at all! I-it's just...I already know so much about Odette, but you're like a mystery. A very loud mystery with a big personality, but a mystery nonetheless."

"Aw, c'mon, I'm like an open book!"

"An open mystery book—one with the first few chapters ripped out! What was your life like back in the Cloud Kingdom? Did you have any friends?"

"I had a nanny, if you could call her that. She's since sought better employment, though. With your father, in fact..."

**Next time: Bright & Breezy! Words Once Spoken Are Past Recalling**

* * *

><p><span>A quick continuity note:<span> For readers following from last episode, I did combine the characters of Gage and Nick, as well as shorten the period of time Breezy and Odette were imprisoned from a year to six months. The changes (which have been edited on chapter 1, too) are more relevant to me than you, but I still thought I'd mention it. Thanks for reading!


	3. Episode 3

Lexa thought there'd never come a field trip worse than The Zoobreak Disaster of 2009, but oh how she was wrong. So wrong.

It all started with the absence of her English teacher. As soon as the bell rang for second period, still with no Mr. Miller in sight, her classroom burst into excited chatter. There was mention of that fabled _if no one's here in 15 minutes we can leave _rule, but the sensible ones argued that a substitute was probably headed their way.

Almost everyone agreed, though, that anything would be an improvement from suffering through another one of Mr. Miller's lessons. _Almost _everyone.

"I don't really mind Mr. Miller," Tyler, the kid who sat beside Lexa, spoke up, rocking back in his seat. His glasses tipped back as he did. "His jokes are terrible, but they're also funny that way."

"Of course _you_'d say that," Colin sneered. He became the founder and president of the Mr. Miller Hate Club last month when a D+ on a test had gotten him grounded. "Your laughing at his jokes is the only reason you're passing this class."

Other students, all card-carrying members of the hate club, chorused their agreement immediately. Gorged by the attention, Colin gave a kick at a leg of Tyler's chair, so that the boy fell over the next time he leaned back.

"Hey!" Lexa, who'd stayed quiet as the sole occupant of the _Miller's totally going to show up ten minutes late with Starbucks _boat, cut in, while Tyler scrambled to get back up.

Everyone stopped mid-sentence to stare. The room grew so quiet you could literally hear her pen drop. She'd been twirling the sealed Sky Scepter around as a reminder of her Spellbind, but to _heck_ with that now.

Her voice rose as she went, "I don't think Mr. Miller's that bad, either. In...in fact, I think he's probably the best teacher in the school! He doesn't play favourites at all!" When the audience she'd accidentally amassed looked unconvinced, and rightfully so, she rushed to add, "His puns are the punniest!"

...Had she really just said that?

Even Colin seemed so overcome at how terrible that was, for a momentous second, the loudmouth actually shut up. Then the second passed. "Okay, then, Lexa. That totally matches up with what you were ranting about before."

He rolled his eyes and made an L sign with his left hand. Whether that stood for Liar or Loser, Lexa wasn't sure. All she knew was that her peers made that gesture dismissively every time she talked now. It'd happened twenty-six times so far this week; she'd counted. What was amazing, though, was how it managed to hurt every time.

She tried to ignore the whispers around her as she bent to give Tyler a hand up. Instead of taking it, he just glared up at her. "You don't have to pretend you like Mr. Miller in my defense, you know. Seriously. That was stupid."

She almost regretted defending him. "I...I don't hate Mr. Miller!"

"Yeah, you mentioned." Tyler grabbed a nearby desk to boost himself up. "But that's not what you said to Colin when he got his test back last month. With the way you were raging then, I thought you were going to get an aneurysm. I've been meaning to ask for a while; did you really have to fake a failing grade to make the guy feel better?"

"I..." Lexa grabbed her pen and clenched it tightly before tucking it behind her ear. "He did feel better, didn't he?"

"At your expense," Tyler reminded her. He straightened his glasses. "You get better marks than I do, Lexa. Why hide them? Are you afraid of people picking on you?"

_What do you think you are, a counsellor? _"No, I get picked on anyway. I just...want people to feel better about themselves. I want them to be happy." It was cheesy, but it was true. Not that anyone would believe it. Her words held no weight. At this point, she was pretty much the girl who cried wolf.

"I was telling the truth when I said I liked Mr. Miller, you know," she continued, reaching up to readjust the pointe shoe ribbon that was keeping her half-pony up. "I mean, I was exaggerating, but it's as you said, I was lying when I was bashing him last month...Um, I'm trying to work on that right now. The whole Not Lying Thing." The resolution was just hard to apply to something as harmless and pliable as an opinion on a teacher. She'd always known that opinions mattered, but it was only recently that she'd realized just how much the _verity _of them mattered even more to others.

Tyler didn't respond immediately, just gave her a long look as he sat back down.

Finally, he smiled, and his usual demeanour shone through like sunlight between clouds. "Good luck with that. And sorry. That was harsh considering how you helped me out back there."

Just as Lexa opened her mouth to reply, Sarah Reyes hissed, "Shhhhh. The sub's coming in right now."

Sarah sat in the back corner of the room, with Lexa's childhood friend Catherine Liu beside her. They'd both stayed silent throughout this whole ordeal, like two ice queens surveying their kingdom from afar.

Lexa shook her head. No. That comparison was cruel. If there was any reason they resented her, it was due to her own actions. Or in Catherine's case, what she still thought were Lexa's actions, after all these years since that stupid misunderstanding ended their friendship.

As for Sarah...Lexa was still waiting for the chance to apologize again, to both her and Gage. Her father's words about only saying sorry when you meant it stopped her every time—not the only reason why the man was constantly on her mind lately.

Their substitute tore through the door then. The woman looked like she was in her early twenties, with auburn hair wound tightly into a bun and designer sunglasses masking only so much of her pale, sunken face. She wore a navy leather jacket, similar gloves, and dark skinny jeans. Diamonds dripped from every available surface, but despite the extra cargo and her scrawny frame, the woman moved with not just ease, but grace. Sarah must have heard that clickity-clack of the woman's sky-high heels from way down the hall. They left a trail of broken hearts and hanging jaws as she sauntered up to the front.

"You can call me Ms. J," she introduced herself. Her smirky red lips matched the apple she was holding—the only thing about her that looked vaguely professional, if you were going by teacher stereotypes. "Today, we're going to take a...what do they call them? Ah, right, a fieldtrip."

The class cheered. Tyler mumbled something about the lack of parental permission. Lexa couldn't tear her gaze away from that apple Ms. J was holding.

She leaned forward and squinted. The fruit got thinner and taller in her vision.

_I really need to get my eyes checked..._

At that thought, Lexa finally broke through the apple's glamour. She realized what the object really was a heartbeat too late.

By then, Ms. J had already cracked the Birdie Bomb split open.

* * *

><p><strong>Episode 3: Bright &amp; Breezy! Words Once Spoken Are Past Recalling<strong>

* * *

><p>It wasn't as crucial a role as princess or pretty cure, but in the week since she'd moved in, Breezy had entrusted herself with the duty of being Lexa's much-needed personal alarm clock.<p>

That afternoon was no exception.

"Psssst," she whispered, waving her wing feathers over Lexa's nose. "Get up."

"Five more minutes," Lexa grumbled, shifting the other way.

"Okaaayy, but in five minutes your friends'll be taking a dip in Swan Lake."

"That's great, Breezy," the girl muttered. Then her eyes shot open. "Wait, what?"

"Finally," Breezy trilled, "Sleeping Beauty awakens!"

"Hey, I got that role in a ballet production once..." Lexa sat up groggily. "Where am I? A school bus...?"

Breezy tilted her head. "Is that what these giant carriages are called?" She raised her wing. "Nah, before you ask, I don't really know what's going on, either. All I know is I was about to chow down on these worms I caught when my old Sky Scepter starts going berserk, flashing lights and making noises like those cell phone doodads you showed me the other day. I look out the window and all I see is this 'bus' thing filled to the brim with Harpies. Since the Princess can't fly, she got me to follow it here, to Swan Lake, where I realized two things: one, worms are gross—just because I'm currently stuck as a robin does not mean I have to eat like one; and two, my presence will not solve anything. So I was about to go find you when I scanned the window and realized another thing: you were already here, asleep in this parked...what did you call it, school bus?"

"School bus," Lexa confirmed, looking a little lost about everything else Breezy had said. The robin was used to that kind of reaction, though. No matter what form she took, some things never changed.

"So as far as I can tell..." Lexa began, "A substitute teacher set a Birdie Bomb on my whole history class that put us all asleep...then turned most of us into Harpies...then jammed us into a school bus to take...here." Breezy followed her gaze out the bus window, where they could see Swan Lake out in the distance. A parade of Harpies was lined up near the edge, waiting patiently for a command to dive in. That command would probably come from the woman standing in front of the line, with a whip in hand and a top bun so impossibly high Breezy recognized it immediately.

"Ahh, so it looks like we've got a run-in with J," the robin said. "She works for Rothbart, but before that…my, um, estate employed her." On paper, she'd actually been Breezy's nanny, though friend-for-hire or scapegoat were more fitting titles for the job. The Cloud Kingdom had long outgrown physical punishment, but as far as taking falls went, J had been like her whipping boy.

Yup, that last one would be the most accurate name.

"J?" Lexa echoed. "I thought that was short for something. Is that like the letter or like the bird?"

"Not short for anything, like the letter. Now I would be questioning how both our worlds share a common language and alphabet right about now, but we're in a time crunch and already on a tangent, so..." Breezy trailed off. "What's wrong?"

Lexa's cheeks flushed, and Breezy had to remind herself that it wasn't the Princess she was looking at. "N-nothing, it's just, well no offense to her, but J really isn't up to par with names like _Odette_ or even _Brianna_. Hey, how did you get your nickname, anyway?"

Breezy really didn't want to get into that right then; especially not with Lexa, who so far didn't seem to be holding any prejudices against her—and, okay, who shared the human Princess' good looks, but was actually within her league and age bracket.

"Whoa, what did I _just say_ about time crunching? No more talking to distract yourself from how sucky—not to mention urgent—this situation is, 'kay? Procrastination is _bad_, and I would know. I'm not going after those people if they fall in."

As tempted to Breezy was. She was dying to know how her parents and siblings were doing, and she wasn't oblivious to how useless she was here. She and Odette had discussed (or more like she had nodded along to Odette's carefully formulated plans with nothing but snarky comments to contribute) how the best way to help their kingdom out was by remaining with Lexa and tracking Spellboy down.

Lexa reached for the pen she'd hidden behind her ear and clicked the translucent egg sitting on top. It glowed blue and hatched to reveal the figure of a white bird. The pen elongated and its point melted into the rest of the thin cylinder. "Swan!" the Sky Scepter chirped, the bird's eyes glowing.

She raised the Scepter up and traced the word _True_ in the air.

"Pretty Cure—Spell start!"

"I hope J won't notice all this glitter from outside," Breezy muttered as she watched Lexa transform in a storm of sparkles.

Right as Cure Ciel was about to make her little pose and speech, Breezy interrupted, "Hate to say it, but there's not enough airtime for that today. Besides, your only audience is asleep."

She pointed her beak at the rest of the bus, where a handful of kids were slumped over snoring just like Lexa had been.

Cure Ciel took them in with a shuddery breath. "Sarah, Tyler, Catherine...They must all have Spellbinds like me. That's why they couldn't have been turned into Harpies."

Breezy gave Ciel a peck on the shoulder—an actual peck, not, like, some weird shoulder kiss to the _cousin_ of the girl she actually liked. "Yeah, well, for their good, you should probably get going. And be careful. And, um, don't die." How was that for mascot mentorship?

"I'm just glad this bus didn't send us to a deserted island to fight to the death." With that puzzling reply, Cure Ciel switched open the bus door and stepped out. Breezy watched her from the window, thinking back to the girl's earlier question.

_How I got my nickname, eh?_ It wasn't a tragic, Odette-esque story or anything, which was part of the problem in the first place. Breezy had pretty much just always been...breezy. Easy come, easy go, and just _easy-going_ in general.

From the second she was born, she'd been made ultra-aware of her identity as the Von Schwarzfels' youngest child. A dozen older siblings stood between her and inheritance of their powerful estate, a position that had earned both envy and pity from outsiders. The mixed bag would have been a burden to someone else, but Breezy had figured out pretty quickly that shrugging the weight off was the easiest way to go. Instead of grappling for power as her siblings did, and struggling with her natal disadvantage, she'd decided to bide her time in their lap of luxury duty-free.

The Cloud Kingdom was quite literal in its name. Much like how Earth is composed largely of, well, earth, the Cloud Kingdom had masses of clouds with endless sky in between, each separate cloud-bound estate governed by baronesses like Breezy's mother. Only nobility and royal guards could fly between the clouds using their Sky Scepters. Those with Spellbinds transformed into Pretty Cure to put those winged shoes to use. Others simply turned themselves or any companions they had into birds, like the form Breezy was currently in.

Most seemed to prefer the former option, which, along with the added protection against spells, made Spellbinds a rite of passage to the Kingdom's citizens. The ability to move between estates in general was greatly admired throughout the kingdom. It was the divide between castes, granting nobles freedom among the clouds while the others were limited to land.

Breezy, however strange it was with the upper class, didn't like travel. Before going to attend Odette's coronation, the idea of transforming into a bird had seemed super unappealing, though Breezy could see now (from a bird's eye view, as Lexa would say) that it wasn't _quite_ so bad. As for a Spellbind—well, that would have been impossible to come up with. What was there in the world that Breezy could possibly have wanted that she didn't already have? Was there anyone she'd rather be?

No, of course not. The onlookers could take their pity and shove it up their derrières; she'd never wanted her family's responsibilities, anyway, and the riches and sloth she'd been allowed for simply being a Von Schwarzfel was more than enough to blur her days without the stress her kin had to suffer. Besides, the moment she got a Spellbind would be the moment she'd be taken seriously, and the slight progress wouldn't be enough to fend off the sly siblings that would pounce on her _immediately_, nor bridge the gap between the two extremities the world expected of her. Let her brothers and sisters go seek power, change the world—she was perfectly content at standstill, perfectly happy with what she had.

She had always believed that everyone was born to fulfill a role. People's paths were long paved out for them, and their personalities were moulded a certain way for it. And for Breezy, her role was to just kick back and live the life peasants could only dream of, in their feast or famine society. _That_ was what she'd been made for, with her lack of talent, lack of drive, and sharp tongue that never failed to highlight other people's flaws, even though she was brimming with them herself. Since her family was usually so busy, it had been mostly servants like J in her life. Practical jokes and profane graffiti occupied her days, which Tutors hadn't appreciated very much.

She also had a reputation among them of being _lazy_, always relying on her maids, or magicking stuff up unnecessarily with her Sky Scepter. That was how she'd gotten her nickname, from the poor servants that had to answer to every ludicrous demand she had, and the pitiful Precure charged with cleaning up after her magical messes. Instead of being insulted, however, Breezy had encouraged the name. If she was going to be a spoiled brat, then she'd be the best spoiled brat they'd ever seen, up until the day she died.

Or, it turned out, up until the day of Rothbart's invasion.

An all too familiar squack brought Breezy back to the present.

She looked up to see a Harpy clawing at the bus window before her. All it took was a couple of quick slashes for the thin glass to crack.

Instead of jumping back, Breezy froze, consumed by a wave of déjà vu.

Detached images coursed through her head: Odette's coronation. Rothbart materializing out of nowhere. A curse enveloping the kingdom. No time to think. Harpies overhead like storm clouds. Coming closer. No one bothering to help, helpless...

Helpless. She was helpless. Just like back then. Not necessarily because others didn't help, but because she couldn't help herself.

She didn't notice the arrow until long after it'd pierced the Harpy's back. The monster slid down the remnants of the window it'd just shattered, groaning.

"Pretty Cure—Spell Break!"

By the time the Harpy hit the pavement, Ciel had already turned him back into a normal boy. Breezy peered at him cautiously, still shaking in the wake of her memories. She felt like she'd just choked down some of that broken glass.

"No offence, but even as his usual self Colin was being a pain today." Cure Ciel made a face and lowered her Sky Scepter, panting a little. In the lush grass around her lay the rest of her fainted classmates, all reverted back to their regular selves as well.

Great mother of clouds was there more to this meek girl than meets the eye.

"Breezy!" Ciel called out. "Are you okay?"

Breezy was fine (physically, at least). But judging by the figure brandishing a whip behind Ciel, the Cure wouldn't be.

Breezy was about to repeat Ciel's earlier warning before quickly coming to her third realization of the day: there was no time.

Instead of going stiff as they had before, her wings went into overdrive. She launched herself at Ciel's attacker head-on, bursting through shards of the broken window.

J's whip attack struck Breezy right in her red stomach like it was a target. Blue sparks of electricity surged from the weapon through to the little bird.

The last thing that hit her before the jolt did was the familiarity of the situation.

* * *

><p>All things considered, Ciel had actually been doing <em>incredibly <em>well before J's arrival.

An arrow slung here, a lopsided heart drawn there—Ciel stopped counting how many Spellbreaks she'd managed after a while. And sure, there'd been some close calls where she or a Harpy had inched dangerously close to Swan Lake, and_ suuure _that Colin Harpy had nearly clawed Breezy's face off, but given the fact that this was her second fight and the stakes had been upped from one Harpy to twenty Harpies...she deserved some slack.

What she did _not_ deserve was her evil substitute teacher sneaking up behind her with an electric whip, nor the anguish of seeing Breezy take the hit.

The robin's electrocution would have been comical in any other case; she looked like a cartoon bird that'd stood on faulty electric wire, with bulging eyes, a gaping beak, and feathers standing on end. She retained that same, er, shocked expression up even after the whip lost contact and she dropped to the ground like a fly. A very heroic fly that may have very well saved Ciel's life.

"So it's true." Ciel tore her gaze from Breezy's fallen body to her assailant. In her gloved hand the whip-which was an activated Sky Scepter, if its stylized handle was anything to go by-was still buzzing with electricity. "Looks like Rothbart's more of a sap than we thought. He couldn't bear doing away with you could he, Your Highness?"

_She thinks I'm Odette, too..._ J took a slow step forward, her heels digging deep into the dirt below. The back of her navy jacket blew in the wind. Cure Ciel backed away instinctively.

"How touching; familial love prevailed over his better judgement this time." J's red lips twisted into a smirk. "It must have been a surprise for you, considering his track record. I do wish he were more consistent, though. He should have just sealed the curse off when he could have."

"Huh?" Ciel spluttered out intelligently. _Top of Miller's English class, everybody. _"Wh-what do you mean?"

"Did you not know, Your Highness?" J ran a gloved hand over her whip, immune to its zap. "The curse on our kingdom was placed with your Spellbind, which has been connected to the whole of the kingdom itself since your coronation."

The whip lashed forward, but Ciel dodged easily.

J continued, "So what would happen if our precious princess, the owner of the bind, were to die?" She gave her whip another useless go, this time at Ciel's feet. The cure jumped up just as it would have made contact, like she was playing helicopter with a jump rope.

"Any ideas?" J pouted when Ciel remained silent. "Huh. You'd think the future queen would get a better education; at least compared to a lowly orphan like me. It's actually very simple, you see: if Your Highness were to die, then the spell on the Kingdom would become permanent. Irreversible. Which is why Rothbart should have done away with you long ago." She licked her lips, which didn't seem to get any less red. "What do you know, I did wind up teaching something today."

Ciel stared at J. The birds hadn't told her anything about this; they probably hadn't been aware of the rule, either. _But wait! That means...Dad...he could have, should have, didn't...He spared Odette's life!_

She forced herself to backtrack, and recall things like, oh, yeah, _not _killing your niece wasn't exactly something to _commend_. Still, she felt the knots that'd formed in her stomach on Sunday untwist a little.

They tensed up again when J reached out once more.

Instead of using her whip again, or even grabbing Ciel's Sky Scepter, her free hand latched onto the glove on Ciel's left arm. In a swift movement, J pulled the stretchy fabric clean off.

Then the woman broke out in manic laughter.

"Why are you..." Ciel rubbed her bare arm, then looked down to make sure J hadn't done anything to it. Other than a bruise from a barre exercise gone wrong yesterday, the skin there seemed unharmed. It didn't escape her, though, that if Rothbart hadn't sealed the Cloud Kingdom's curse with Odette's life, J could try to finish the job then. One little zap with that darn whip, and precure powers or not, Ciel would go into cardiac arrest.

J lifted her sunglasses and wiped the eyes beneath them as she tried—and failed—to collect herself. "Roth-y's little dancer daughter," she managed between uncharacteristic bouts of giggles, "the gap-toothed picture in his wallet...breaking spells...playing princess..."

Then her laughter stopped dead. Her stormy grey eyes bore into Ciel's. They gleamed almost hungrily. "That _is_ the case, correct? Princess Odette's left arm is covered in scars, and I know for a fact that Rothbart's daughter is her splitting image. Rothbart might not be able to differentiate between a fourteen-year-old and a nineteen-year-old, but I can. So, who are you?"

The way J was looking at her made Ciel want to spill everything. The truth was at the tip of her tongue. Still, she wouldn't relent. "...I'm Cure Ciel."

"Yes, but tell me, who are you, really?" J snickered. Man, that gaze was intense. It pushed Ciel to her breaking point.

"Lexa Roth." The words leaked out before she could help them. Her hands shot up to cover her mouth, but it was too late.

"Good girl," J cooed. "I'll have to tell Roth-y to raise your allowance. Don't worry, though, we'll keep this our little secret." She pressed a finger to her lips and winked. "In fact, I'll help you out, make him keep on thinking you're the princess. No wonder he was looking so frazzled these past few days! Oh, this will be so much fun. I knew targeting his daughter's class would be a blast."

Ciel gaped at her. "You purposely targeted my class?"

"Oh, I'll get in so much trouble with ol' Bart after, so please don't tattle on me. Well, to be fair, it wasn't exactly my idea in the first place. But, yes, we just needed to, ah, _check _something."

And just as suddenly as the laughter had come, her expression hardened and her seemingly permanent smirk morphed into a scowl. With her angular features, the effect was terrifying, and Ciel raised her Scepter up on instinct.

When J spoke next, it was practically a growl. "It was fascinating to see you break those spells once, Bart Jr., but do _not_ try it again. The joke will get old, and I won't be nearly as amused. In fact, let my lesson of the day be that you're in way over your head. Wouldn't want to end up like this." And at that, she kicked Breezy's unmoving body over to Ciel. "How strange of Barty to let Lady Brianna live on. I suppose she was the one to tell you about this. Oh, don't cry, she'll wake up; she never had much of a life to lose. But you...you'd make a great Harpy to add to my collection."

J fished into a pocket of her jacket and took out a crumpled piece of paper. Scrawled onto it in blue pen was four simple letters: _T-R-U_…Ciel realized with a start that it was the napkin she'd written her Spellbind on.

"Oh, you can keep this." She slid the paper into Ciel's hand.

For the first time that day, J smiled with an open mouth, and Ciel half-expected fangs. Instead, her teeth were brown and gnarly, as if toothbrushes were a foreign concept in the Cloud Kingdom. The dental disaster was a harsh contrast to how well-kept the rest of the woman was, and Ciel remembered something Breezy had said about J's former servant status.

The woman gave a little wave, apparently unaware of the atrocities in her mouth. "Farewell, Lexa! I hope this's the last time we see each other...for your sake." She winked again before waltzing off into the woods, leaving Ciel to pore over Breezy's body.

* * *

><p>Breezy had had this same dream so many times, when the Cloud palace's throne room and its open roof came into view, her instant reaction was <em>ugh, not this <em>again_. _She'd already revisited this Coronation Cut Short once today, when that Harpy had tried to attack her. And something similar had happened that day in the lair, too.

This time, she'd tuned in moments before the start of Rothbart's invasion. Even as a human, she stood and stood _out _among the stiff nobles gathered beneath the platform housing the throne, where the future queen herself was already seated. Behind Odette, the head of the kingdom's Pretty Cure, Cure Falcon, was just taking the Cloud Crown out of its ornate glass case, having just completed the Spellbind Sealing Ceremony. Everyone _ooh_ed and _ahh_ed as the woman held it up to the light spilling in from the open ceiling, but Breezy was focused solely on the girl who'd be donning that crown later on. The girl whom she'd been harbouring a fair-sized crush on ever since they'd met last night in the garden. The girl whose shaking hands were betraying the solemn smile she'd stuck on her face.

The crown was literally _inches _away from the top of Odette's blonde little head when the hand darted out. Gasps and screams replaced the room's former silence as Rothbart snatched the object from an uncharacteristically off-guard Cure Falcon's hands and put it on his own balding scalp. Looking back, Breezy wasn't entirely sure how or even when he'd gotten up there.

"Long time no see, Nephew." He flashed a grin at Odette, whose mask of calmness had vanished instantly. "Did you miss me? I certainly missed you. In fact, I've even been counting down the _seconds _before our reunion. Why don't you all count with me? Three, two, one…"

Indeed, the whole process only took seconds. As soon as Rothbart raised his staff on _one_, Harpies sprung out from the sky overhead, so numbered they looked like one giant storm cloud. All the Pretty Cure who'd been on standby instantly went airborne to fight them off.

Meanwhile, a white haze seeped through the throne room's doorway. The chaotic screeching around Breezy actually _increased _when the mist made contact with the last row of spectators, even after most of them turned into Harpies and birds themselves.

"Don't touch the fog!" someone yelled. "It'll make you one of _them!_" Breezy would later on find out that this only applied to those without Spellbinds, and that the mist was the physical manifestation of the curse Rothbart had placed with the power of Odette's royal Spellbind.

But back in the past, irreversible no matter how many times Breezy went back to it, her mind had gone blank. While everyone around her was doing something useful for either themselves or someone else, she'd froze, ever unchanging.

_This is like a bad, Lexa-level-pretentious metaphor for my whole freaking life. _And it only got better when the white haze approached her.

Then, at least, she'd taken action—just the wrong kind. She shoved past some servants, the last wave of evacuees, until she came across a familiar red bun bobbing above of the crowd.

"J!" she called out, but the plea was lost in the chaos. Breezy tried reaching out to her nanny instead, grabbing the back of that tacky dress. The other redhead whirled around, her eyes stormier than Breezy had ever seen them, including the time a practical joke on Breezy's part had seared her eyebrows off.

"Oh, good," Breezy said breathlessly, near tears, "you can help me. I don't know why, but my family pretty much left on their own, and I didn't know what to do, but—"

"Let go."

"What?"

"Let go of me," J repeated, tugging on her dress with one hand. "And maybe consider why everyone's leaving you, _Breezy_."

The words and accompanying nickname didn't sting like a fresh wound, but drew pain from a defect Breezy had long been aware of. She didn't respond, just held on tight, near tears, and J never relented, either. The flowery fabric of her dress tore at the skirt as J struggled against Breezy's grip. Breezy saw J turn back at the ripping sound, then gasp at the sight behind them.

Breezy had a feeling she knew what J was seeing, but she didn't want to see it herself. She took her Sky Scepter and drew a quick heart onto the torn fabric, accustomed to performing bind-less spells from all her pranks. The fabric instantly turned into a sort of gas mask, which she held to her face as she shouldered past J and the fog consuming the both of them.

If Breezy was going to commit terrible things like nanny abandonment, then she should have at least had the commitment not to look back, which was one of the many places she'd gone wrong that day.

J still stood where Breezy had left her, but now the usually composed woman was screaming for help. Breezy wanted to whip her mask off and sling it at J, but it didn't escape her what a sacrifice that would be. No, saving her was a task for someone stronger and smarter, someone who had courage and skills to spare where Breezy barely had enough for herself.

Breezy found herself especially lacking in those departments then, as she watched J's plain but pretty features morph into a Harpy's. The monster lurched forward, groaning, "_Creatorrrr_."

"I d-didn't create you," Breezy choked out, even though she knew communicating with the Harpy was pointless—the bind-less could only repeat one word.

"_Creator._" The monster pointed its wing accusingly at Breezy before bringing it back to attack. And even then, Breezy was helpless, like a spectator of her own demise. There it was, the climax and lowest point in this nightmare, the center of the vortex that just kept on freaking pulling her back…

"Watch out!" came a voice from overhead, not a far cry from what Lexa had sounded like earlier today.

Like the raptors she'd been named after, Cure Falcon swooped in like a storm, her sword a silvery flash of lightning as it met the Harpy's wing.

The Harpy seemed as light as its feathers as the Cure knocked it off its feet and pierced its stomach with her sword, all the while balancing the white swan cradled in her right arm.

At the time, Breezy had been ecstatic at the rescue, but her present self knew not to get too happy too early.

"Take Her Majesty and go," Cure Falcon commanded, setting the swan she'd been holding down before Breezy.

Breezy scooped the bird up without thinking, then nearly dropped it once she realized what—or who—it was she'd been entrusted with.

"NO! T-take her back...I can't...I cant do any of this..."

Her protests were lost on Falcon, who was too busy breaking the Harpy's spell. Just as J was restored, a new swarm of Harpies flew in, some even 'spellbound' among them.

"Go," Falcon hissed as she fought them off. "The Pretty Cure and I will keep Rothbart's army at bay here. You two must escape. Find Her Majesty's Spellbind and have her use that Scepter." She was referring, of course, to the swan Scepter that had been strapped haphazardly to Odette with a ribbon from the Cure's costume.

"NOW!" Falcon added when Breezy still wouldn't budge, and it was the sheer force behind the word that got her feet moving, even as tears stung her eyes.

What came next shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone; Falcon should probably have her military status evoked for not having foreseen it.

"Well, well, well. Who do we have here?"

The duo had made it outside by then, with Odette swinging wildly around in Breezy's noodle arms and their Sky Scepters held between the younger girl's teeth.

Rothbart seemed to relish in their fear, taking his sweet time as he strode over. He muttered an incantation under his breath and let it form a cloud of that white haze at the tip of his Scepter-turned-staff.

"This is for all the wrong your family has done to this Kingdom," he sneered as he let the cloud fly towards Breezy, who didn't have the time or spirit to summon a makeshift mask this time. The curse hit her in the chest, and she felt herself shrinking in an instant, becoming as small as she'd always felt. The body of something as common and useless as a robin suited her much better than what she had before.

Rothbart summoned a birdcage with his staff and trapped both birds inside with an easy wave of the wand. Breezy didn't put up a fight, just spat her scepter out in defeat.

She turned to Odette, who'd remained silent and shell-shocked this entire time. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I couldn't do anything to help."

"IT'S CALLED A SHOEBOX," the swan responded, and Breezy jumped back.

"Whoa, wait, is my scarred subconscious glitching out? 'Cause that wasn't part of what happened—"

"I SEE KIDS PUTTING HURT BIRDS IN THEM ALL THE TIME IN CARTOONS SO IT SHOULD WORK RIGHT." And it was Lexa saying this, hovering over her, her Odette-like features blurry as Breezy blinked awake in the present.

"Wha—"

"She's up! Oh, Odette, she's up!"

Lexa clapped her hands together, the noise thundering over Breezy's makeshift-sock-burrow in this 'shoebox.'

"What happened?" Breezy tried to tilt her head up to get a better look around Lexa's bedroom, but pain shot up from her…everywhere.

"You were electrocuted," Odette informed her helpfully, voice just barely breaking from her usual formal tone.

Breezy listened carefully as Lexa described the events that had followed Breezy's electrocution, reacting with over-dramatized sounds like she'd seen on the 'sitcoms' that aired on the TV that Lexa had shown her. She gasped when Lexa explained Odette's connection to the curse on the kingdom and booed when the brunette mentioned J having her Spellbind.

"So what'd you do with the kids after J left?" Breezy asked afterwards.

"I didn't know _what _to do, so I used my precure strength to carry them back to the bus."

"And you just…left them there?" Odette pressed.

Lexa blushed and tightened her hair ribbon. Breezy noticed how red the girl's palms were. Lexa always seemed to grip things tightly whenever she felt…well, any kind of negative emotion, really. Instead of firing some of them arrows at Breezy for the robin's many screw-ups this past week (which included but was not limited to the breaking of a cuckoo clock and the pulverizing of a remote control when a Bachelor hadn't chosen the girl she wanted on TV), all the younger girl had done was clench her fists and volunteer to clean the messes up before her mother got home. It was only while she was actually sweeping up the clock's broken parts or digging up old babysitting money to buy a new remote that Breezy could hear her cursing beneath her breath.

"Right," Breezy chirped, "you should've at least left a doctor's note on that napkin to excuse their absence."

"I suppose J will likely cover the incident up," Odette mused. "At least, assuming she didn't return afterwards. Though, if her plan was to draw you out all along, then that probably isn't likely…"

"Whatever happens, she'll probably never get a job involving children again." Wherever would Breezy find a new nanny now?

"Not necessarily," Odette said. "You know her Curse."

Lexa knit her dark eyebrows. "Curse? What curse?"

Odette was like one of Breezy's old tutors, overly eager to answer the questions she'd probably purposely planted. "A curse occurs when a person has both a Sky Scepter and a Spellbind. Usually that would result in a Cure, but those are propelled by a desire to change. The Cursed…resist change, are in denial of their Spellbinds, refuse to work on abolishing their flaws. Instead of doing that, they use black magic to create Harpies, and then use the dark energy from those spells to complete their Spellbinds through unnatural means. This results in curious psychic abilities that are twisted fulfillments of the original resolution."

The swan princess paused for effect, and Breezy took the chance to quip, "I _love_ it when you talk magic to me. You're like the bird version of—what was that thing you showed us, Lexa? Wiki-something?"

Odette ignored her, but that was nothing new. "I do not know what Spellbind J possesses, but from the conversations I'd overheard while in captivity, it seems that she has the ability to manipulate thoughts and actions simply by looking at her subjects."

"Clouds," Breezy said, "I can't believe you picked _that _much up from the distant conversations we heard whenever the Cursed visited and Rothbart stashed us away. I barely knew J had gotten a Spellbind and un-harpied herself before today, much less joined Rothbart. All _I _remember from those awful six months was 'wah wah wah tell me Falcon's Spellbind already.' As if it's our faults she's kicking his butt so badly in the war."

"In any case," Odette finished, "J will likely cover this incident up with her ability. She's done so in the past."

Lexa grabbed the blue warm-up sweater lying on her bed and slung it over her lacy white top. "Now that I know Breezy's fine, I _should _double-check that everyone else is okay, though."

Odette nodded approvingly. "I'll come with you. We can also carry out the plan we were discussing earlier."

"Whoa, wait," Breezy protested, "you can't go with her; weren't you listening? If you die, then the curse on our kingdom's permanent. I will _permanently _need to eat worms like an actual robin. We can't risk it if J's on the lookout for you now."

"…Very well," Odette said, bowing her head, and Breezy felt the usual Odette-induced butterflies in her stomach squirm like worms. The princess—and she was still a princess, since the coronation had never been completed—had spoken about feeling trapped and useless in captivity before, and being stuck in this room now probably didn't feel any better than being locked up in Rothbart's cage.

"Don't worry, Your Highness, I'll cover for ya instead." Breezy fluttered out of the shoebox and tried to ignore the ensuing sting. All things considered, she was recovering pretty quickly, which only confirmed the fact that J had merely set out to rattle Lexa. "What was that plan you were talking about?"

The two cousins exchanged a look. Lexa spoke first. "It's, uh…Breezy, how important is your Sky Scepter to you?"

"Most babies have rattles. I had my Sky Scepter instead and turned my greedy wetnurse into a pig. Which is to say, yes, my Scepter is very important to me."

"Oh, well, that's really too bad because…" Lexa looked to Odette for guidance before looking down in defeat, her fingers locking onto the top of her footboard. A second later, she gave it another stab—and what a_ stab_ it was. "Odette and I were thinking we needed to recruit a new pretty cure. They would be using your Sky Scepter, though...Wh-which is fine, right?"

"Right," Breezy responded automatically, because it was the _right _thing to do, the logical thing. With Lexa's Spellbind out in the open, they needed someone else on-hand in case J were to turn her into a Harpy. They could use any help they could get.

Breezy wasn't going to prevent that, no matter how much the selfish brat within her wanted to hoard the Scepter. Lexa wouldn't understand the class importance of a Sky Scepter any more than Odette would understand the limbo of being more than a peasant but less than royalty.

Odette, who'd remained knowingly silent, asked, "Did you have any candidates in mind?"

"The only girls that had Spellbinds on the bus today were Sarah and Catherine," Lexa said. "I—I _can't _ask Catherine for such a favour, especially if it involves flying shoes, so I think I'm going to see if Sarah's willing. Both options hate me, though, so it's like picking my poison."

"I am positive they don't _hate _you," Odette said, and Breezy was inclined to agree; Lexa had the tendency to exaggerate others' opinions. It was all part of the dramatic streak/martyr complex both cousins possessed, which Breezy found just as adorable as annoying.

Lexa didn't look convinced. "Anyway, I think I'm gonna head to the police station to see if there's anything on what happened today there. I'll ask for Officer Reyes' address while I'm there, which should be where Sarah and her family are living since they sold their house last year. That way, I'll be killing two birds with one stone."

As they made their way out, Breezy cheeped in feigned offence. "What is this about killing birds?"

* * *

><p>"Is it <em>true<em>?" was, ironically, the question J was bombarded with immediately upon entering the cottage The Cursed all shared.

"Well," J crooned, slipping off her jacket to reveal a _Toronto Blue Jays _tanktop underneath, "let's just say Sean now owes me ten bucks."

Understanding struck her partner immediately and he shook his head, dark ponytail swaying behind him. "I can't believe you're betting on such an important matter."

"Oh, I won't deny it's important, Xandy. In fact, I'm reporting it as soon as I can."

He sighed. "I should have known that he wasn't to be trusted."

"I wouldn't say that," J said, plopping down on their cottage's couch. Her partner, Xander, joined her with a grunt. "It's just that his loyalties are divided. Personally, I think the indecision shows integrity."

"More integrity than most royals would possess?"

J nodded. "He just needs a nudge in the right direction."

"And I take it we'll be the ones to give him that nudge?"

She set her sunglasses down on the coffee table. They were monogrammed with the single letter of her name—or, at least, the only letter of her name that she recalled when the Von Schwarzfels had found her.

Her eyes met Xander's icy blue ones as she said, "I know just the way."

* * *

><p><strong><span>Preview:<span>**

_"Hey, Breezy, do you think your doing these previews with me is supposed to, like, foreshadow Cure Robin's identity or something?"_

"Cure Robin? Whozzat?"

_"Well, since you have the robin Sky Scepter, I can only figure that's the name we'll use."_

"Eh, okay, but Cure Robin sounds like such a sidekick's name. Unless we can patent something better, you can count me out of the running. Not that I was ever a viable option, anyway. By the way, how did you come up with Cure Ciel, Lexa?"

_"I dunno, actually. I think ciel was a vocabulary word in French class, and it just spilled out of my mouth when I was panicking…?"_

"…Incredible."

**Next time: Flight/fight! Who Will Be Cure Robin?**

* * *

><p>AN: Sorry for the long wait! School and extracurriculars got extra hectic. This chapter also turned out way longer than I'd expected, so much longer that I had to cut it in half. Yup, this colossus is only half of what I had planned, which is why the episode title had to change, since I hadn't covered _any _of that ground yet, making the previous preview a complete lie that I can't fix due to the document going out of date OTL. Something similar happened to the first two chapters, which makes me wonder if I'll end up with W-esque two-episode arcs...Hopefully this was still eventful, though! I'll also be posting this story on AO3 soon~


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